Atari Celebrates Its 40th Birthday

Video game publishing giant Atari is turning 40 and have recently kick started a year’s worth of celebrations with a Facebook giveaway sweepstakes. They’ve also released a couple of fund bits of multimedia taking a look back at the company’s long history, which can be found following the break.

Atari has been around almost as long as video games themselves. And they’re still publishing, most recently diving into the mobile scene with games like Circus Atari and Centipede: Origins. The publisher also recently announced a partnership with Zynga, becoming an early partner in the companies newly launched mobile publishing program.

“Over its 40 years of operation, Atari has become one of the most iconic and recognized brands around the world…” said Atari CEO Jim Wilson. “Today, we aim to keep the tradition alive through new and creative development efforts based on what made us great in our early days--offering our devoted and growing fan base fun but challenging games on mobile and online platforms.”

Atari wasted little time in getting it’s 40th anniversary rolling, kicking off a pair of promotions. The first simply asks Atari fans to post pictures of themselves wearing Atari t-shirts on their Facebook wall. On that same page, fans can also sign up to take part in the “40 Givaways in 4 Days” promotion, offering all sorts of Atari swag to 40 lucky winners…Over the span of four days.

In case you are in need of a refresher course for your Atari history, the publisher has also released an info graphic highlighting the past 40 years of gaming. This bad boy is far too big to post here, so you can view it for yourself simply by clicking right here.

Finally, Atari has released a special compilation video taking a look back at some of best games from the past 40 years. You can check that out below.